“In some countries working-class groups have proved to be the most nationalistic and jingoistic sector of the population,” wrote the highly esteemed sociologist and political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset — 60 years ago last month.
In his seminal article “Democracy and Working-Class Authoritarianism,” which appeared in the August 1959 issue of the American Sociological Review, Lipset observed that many in the working class were “in the forefront of the struggle against equal rights for minority groups, and have sought to limit immigration or to impose racial standards in countries with open immigration.” …
Lipset’s analysis in that article, which I discovered after reading Jordan Michael Smith’s piece “Who Are Trump’s Supporters” in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, obviously resonates today, both internationally (with the rise of populism in Europe) and in Donald Trump’s America. CONT.
Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call